


what a tangled string of Christmas lights we weave

by thelittlefanpire



Series: tlf TROPED Fics [13]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Bodyguard, Christmas, F/M, Hair Braiding, Letters, Modern Royalty, cyrano AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:48:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29107341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelittlefanpire/pseuds/thelittlefanpire
Summary: When the royal family loses their beloved Prince Wells, the future king of Arkadia, all eyes are on them. The Queen remains as stoic as ever, the Spare grapples with his new responsibilities, the Princess drowns in her grief, and the King is threatening to abolish the monarchy forever.At Christmastime, as tensions in the palace rise with the vicious tabloids outside, the royal family makes an escape to a castle in the mountains, hoping to find solace and reconcile with their loss.Princess Octavia will try to mend her broken heart back together as she becomes entranced with the letters sent back and forth between herself and another. But when it’s revealed who the true penman is, will she rise above her sorrow or sink further into it?
Relationships: Aurora Blake/Marcus Kane, Bellamy Blake/Echo, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Octavia Blake/Lincoln
Series: tlf TROPED Fics [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1337341
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7
Collections: TROPED: Holiday Trope Exchange 2.0





	what a tangled string of Christmas lights we weave

**Author's Note:**

  * For [teeandrainbows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/teeandrainbows/gifts).



> Written for TROPED’s 2020 Holiday Fic Exchange! 
> 
> My tropes request was:  
> Royalty AU + Cyrano AU + Characters fall and end up landing on top of each other and have a “moment” + hair brushing/braiding 
> 
> Inspired by the television show, The Royals on E! 
> 
> **Warning: Drug and Alcohol Use Throughout**

When there are cracks in a foundation the slightest disturbance can cause a house to crumble. There are cracks that run from top to bottom letting things in from the outside and settling into the deep recesses within. Some cracks run across it caused by a deep pressure fracturing the structure over a long period of time. The former only needs to be repaired, but the latter has the ability to buckle, to cave in on itself, and bring everything down with it. 

Octavia’s family didn’t live in the kind of homes that easily cracked, but the Royal House of Arkadia certainly was on the brink of their own crumbling empire. 

It was a kingdom built on rifts. Her people split from greater powers across the ocean to gain freedom and traveled by boats to the strange western shores. The land was won with bloodshed and tragedy, a groundwork that led the monarchy into eventual triumph. 

Though in the last century, the royal family, and the aristocrats in their court, fashioned themselves into celebrities. They moved farther west to the hills where they became famous beyond their birthright and hailed because of their talents, and their abilities to entertain their subjects. Now, it was all glamour and prestige. An image not quite clear, a distortion in the creases and smudges on the film. As they say, it was all smoke and mirrors.

For the royal family, the outside pressure of ruling a country in constant change and ever turning trends, forced them to present themselves to the public’s scrutiny, whether they laid bare all their faults or they created illusions for the people to see. It was the pressure inflicted on themselves inwardly, behind closed doors, that would eventually fissure them beyond repair. 

Once, a great political force, with a Council to back their decisions and respect from other nations, now no more than the world’s court jester. 

Time was a great crevice, slowly creating chinks in the armor and cracks in the foundation, with slow and steady pressure, but certain events had the ability to change the infrastructure of even the sturdiest castle. 

It was like an earthquake the day the future king of Arkadia, Prince Wells, was presumed missing and then declared dead...

_Crack._

There were no warning signs when Princess Octavia’s other brother, Prince Bellamy, was made the heir to the throne. And he was not ready for it...

_Crack._

Barely a tremor under fancy soles, her mother, the queen, did not cry at the memorial...

_Crack._

The waves of the quake washed over them when her father, the sovereign king, threatened to abolish the monarchy...

_Crack._

And in the aftermath, when Octavia realized her oldest brother, her beloved Wells, was dead...

_CRACKKKKKKKKKKK._

Though the monarch was a mockery, it was unable to let go of its power...until the earthquake. Until the smoke cleared and a house was left cracked and broken. The inhabitants in their grief fled from the gossip and the slander to the only place it couldn’t reach them. 

Octavia was only a child when there was an earthquake at the summer estate by the ocean, and she still remembers how it split the mansion right down the middle. She can recall the deep trench running from the front doors to the pool in the backyard. It was deep and dark, seemingly bottomless in her young mind, going right down to the earth’s core. 

They never returned to the seaside palace because it was beyond repair, but they built more homes, grander and stronger, along different parts of the coast to withstand the fault lines that ran along Arkadia’s Royal lands. And one of the royal family’s favorites was an old castle as far north as their kingdom could reach, built by the first royals to claim the land many years ago. They had enjoyed spending their Christmases together there in the past. 

Octavia stared out the window of the helicopter as it flew high over the snow-capped mountains below. The last few hours had been a blur, as had the last few months of her life, everything blending in so she didn't know how far they had to go or how much time had even passed. She watched numbly as the hills turned to forests with trees that grew so high they almost reached the clouds to the mountains. She could almost taste the fresh air out in the wide, open spaces down below from inside her ride. The mountain range was endless and the small towns that dotted the area were hard to pick out, stuck in among the frosted slopes discreetly. 

Octavia must have dozed off, still a little buzzed from the champagne she had on the airplane, but when the helicopter lurched, dropping down and making her stomach flop, she was fully alert as the castle finally came into view. She resisted the urge to go flying from her seat but looked with hooded eyes across to where her new bodyguard was seated. 

Queen Aurora had fired almost every person from their royal security team because of the chaos that followed Wells’ memorial in the fall. As the leaves turned so did the tabloids against them afterward. They rounded on them with a vicious hunger that had not been seen before, egged on by King Marcus’ words of the referendum and the echoes of it that came back from the people. It had shaken her family and a new detail had been assigned to them swiftly. 

Octavia was used to the revolving door of men and women in suits and sunglasses, hidden in dark corners with eyes always trained on her. But there was something about her latest—Lincoln—that fascinated her. 

As the helicopter sat down on the hard frozen helipad, Lincoln was up and moving quickly to escort Octavia into the castle. His gloved hand hovered over her hip and his body blocked the harsh, cold wind like it was blocking the paparazzi in the hills. 

He was always smooth and efficient like that. Not much seemed to break his professionalism and his decorum rivaled royalty. When they first met, Octavia had thrown every trick in the book at him, but he didn’t give in or run away. 

She watched his face now as his dark brown eyes swept over the castle, his cheeks turning auburn in the cold, and the tiniest snowflakes settling into his beard. He wasn’t mesmerized by the atrocious size of the castle or the sickening amount of silver bells and marble statues in the grand foyer, but he was searching. He was planning for exits, unseen dangers, and any threats to the Princess of Arkadia. Lincoln was always doing his job. So boring. 

Octavia rolled her eyes at him, took one look at the castle staff setting out the frivolous Christmas decorations that would run over every inch of the castle that her mother had shipped in the night before, plucked a bottle of Merlot from a waiting ice bucket, and marched off to find somewhere warm to enjoy it. 

She didn’t even wait for Lincoln to catch up with her. 

He found her, after a debriefing with the head of the Ark Guard, two flights of stairs and two wrong turns later, in the library. There was a roaring fire in the center of the room with stacks lined up in half circles around it, and floor to ceiling windows behind them. Plush drapes were still open letting in a soft purple glow from the fading sun and Lincoln shivered at the sight of the snow still falling outside burying everything deeper under it. 

He scanned around, taking in his surroundings as quickly as he could until he landed on the Princess. 

She was still wearing the thin leather jacket over her bare shoulders and skinny jeans with booties. Lincoln didn’t understand how she wasn’t frozen from their trip until he saw the glass of Merlot in her hand that was fizzing quietly at the top. 

“I thought we confiscated all your jobi nuts, Your Highness,” Lincoln spoke into the quiet library and tried to remain calm as Octavia’s body stilled by the bookcase she was lazily thumbing through. He didn’t want to spook her. She had the tendency to do wild things when caught under the influence and Lincoln struggled to keep up with her on a good day. 

“It’s amazing what you’ll find in these books, Bodyguard,” she smirked, a slight slur in her speech, and plucked a book off the shelf over her head. She opened it to reveal a hollowed-out space and a plastic baggie with crushed jobi nuts sitting right inside. The nuts once grew wild in Arkadia, caused hallucinations in raw form, and was the Princess’s favorite recreational drug to get her high. She snapped the book shut before Lincoln could move to take it and she was drifting to a different section before he could blink. 

“We’ve kept all kinds of secrets between the pages of these books for hundreds of years.” Her hand touched the spines of a few books that he recognized and one he didn’t. A large tome of Royal History, the most recent lineages, _War and Peace_ , the play, _Cyrano de Bergerac,_ and a deep rich red book with a golden script on it. 

“There was a royal, a young queen actually. An aspiring actress that one. Always the most dramatic. And she fell for her bodyguard. Imagine that.” Octavia smiled at him like the Cheshire Cat. She was always flirting with him and he was always turning down her advances, so he didn’t flinch at her words and she continued. “Queen Josephine of the House of Lightbourne and her Gabriel. They started this epic, earth-shattering love affair. Quietly, secretly. Quite scandalous, but it didn’t matter to them.”

“And they would write the most romantic, aching love letters and hide them in a hollowed-out book.” 

She sighed wistfully at the red book, and when Lincoln still didn’t respond, she downed the rest of her Merlot. 

“Do you need me for anything else today, Princess?” 

“Actually, I do.” Octavia grabbed Lincoln’s arm and pulled him down the many halls and flights of stairs until they reached a set of double doors guarded by two Ark Guards that he knew vaguely. They were the Princess’s room guards. 

On her command, they opened the doors for her, and Lincoln stepped inside along with her into the holiday liar of the Princess. 

It looked similar to her room in the main palace but cozier. There was a white marble fireplace filling up one wall, a four-post bed in the middle of the room, and a sitting area with antique-looking furniture. Vaguely familiar paintings lined the other walls. 

The Princess’ bags had been dropped off in the front corner and Octavia reached inside one while dropping her leather jacket onto the floor. Lincoln leaned back as the doors closed on them and waited for her command as she plopped down little baggies of drugs next to her tea setting in the middle of the room. 

He watched as she sat down on the edge of her loveseat delicately, poured hot water from a teapot into a gold-rimmed teacup, and then tapped in a few elements from a bag. She stirred the cup, picked it up with her right pinky out, and slurped from it very unladylike. 

Lincoln had to stifle a chuckle with a cough because the scene was absolutely absurd. He tried very hard not to let it get to him. Not to let anything the Princess or her family did break up his concentration on the job. So when she stripped off her lacy tank after complaining about the heat, leaving her in a black push-up, he avoided her eyes, not wanting to see when the effects of her drugs would fully dilate the green to black leaving them lifeless. Or maybe her tea concoction would light a spark in them. 

It was half an hour later when the spark was fully lit. 

Two Christmas trees had been brought into the room with boxes of garland and lights and baubles. Lincoln was helping sort through the lights while Octavia was fixing her trees on either side of the fireplace. 

It was all highs and lows with the Princess of Arkadia. She was all or nothing. Fast or slow. Her family thought she had stared too long into that dark abyss, but Lincoln wondered if she had found something down there and was chasing after it now. He had only been a member of the Ark Guard since Prince Wells had died, but he knew of the royal family all his life and he had watched the choices Octavia had made in recent years. She was like a bird in the sky that had finally been uncaged, but she was lost with no direction after the death of her brother. 

Lincoln looked up at the portrait over the fireplace of a young Octavia, around eighteen he guessed. Most of her face was clear except for her eyes and the rest of her body that was dripping down the canvas in black and white. Her eyes, though, had red paint dripping from them and bled down the canvas like blood. It was like the Red Queen of Hearts, from Alice in Wonderland, lived here. The needles of the Christmas trees had been dipped in red as well. Soft plops of paint were dropping from the branches and staining the carpet. 

“Okay,” Octavia said, dropping her paintbrush and leaning back from her latest masterpiece. “I can help you untangle those lights now, Bodyguard.”

Lincoln grunted a response and looked back down at his hands tangled up in the green strands of Christmas lights. He handed over the end with the socket to her and began unrolling the rest of it. 

“My name is Lincoln, Your Highness. I think we’ve moved past the point where you forget my name on purpose.”

“But where’s the fun in that, huh?” She was teasing him and he threw a strand of lights at her unthinkingly. Lincoln was a good foot-and-a-half taller than her so they went over her head and dropped to the floor behind her. Octavia blinked, threw her strand at him in retaliation, and he caught it. 

They went back and forth with the strings until they were all tangled up, laughter on both their faces, Lincoln stepped back, and caused Octavia to be pulled toward him. The strands tightened and she lost her balance, pulling Lincoln down to the ground with her. 

They landed in an awkward position, Lincoln half on top of her and her chest right up under his line of sight. His eyes immediately went to her face. He could see the clear green light in her eyes, a spark turning them like the waves of the ocean. She wore a soft, easy smile that Lincoln wasn’t sure he had ever seen before. There was a moment passing between them. He decided not to move and she didn’t say a word. 

Until voices echoed outside the doors, someone was walking past the room with a deep voice talking to the guards, and Octavia perked up in recognition. 

“It’s Roan!” 

She slid under him, pulled the strands of Christmas lights with her and then off of her body, and jumped up running toward the doors. She had thrown on a t-shirt and was out before Lincoln’s words could slip from his tongue leaving him scratching his head. 

“Who the hell is Roan?”

Lincoln learned from Miller, Prince Bellamy’s bodyguard, that Roan was a lord that lived up in New Ark, was a sportsman, and was staying at the castle for the holidays. He was also Prince Wells’ childhood best friend. And Octavia’s first crush. 

None of that information had sat well with him while he finished decorating the princess’s room and kept an eye on her from afar. 

She hadn’t left the castle so he was mostly off duty, but she had hardly left Lord Roan’s room, and Lincoln had definitely taken notice of the latter. He couldn’t quite figure out why that sat so sourly in his chest. The Princess was known for her escapades with all sorts of different people; from strangers, she met at the clubs to models at her fashion shows to old acquaintances and royal aristocrats. People just seemed to gravitate toward her. 

As hard as Lincoln fought to keep a level head on the job, he had noticed the pull she had on him, too. He was only a man after all. 

It was almost twilight when Octavia came waltzing back into her room. She had changed clothes, slipped into a slinky silk number that cut off right under her hips and left most of her back and legs exposed. Her hair was curled but her eyeliner was smudged causing her eyes to be lost in the blackness around them. She was coming down from her high, but not quick enough that she was crashing into her bed like Lincoln had seen her do many times before.

She sat down at the desk behind her loveseat instead and pulled out a pen and paper from a drawer. 

“Dear Roan,” Octavia said out loud and looked over to Lincoln. She hesitated and wrote a few more words down before continuing aloud, “It was the loveliest surprise to see you today. Even if I expected you to be here to help us through this horrible affair anyway. You and Wells always did make these gray halls more cheery…” 

She looked back up at Lincoln with her eyebrows knitted together and a slight sheen in her dark eyes. 

“Oh, my god. Please help me! I literally have no idea what to write!” 

“Why are you writing to him? Didn’t you just see him? And won’t see him tomorrow and every day of this Holiday? ” Lincoln asked dryly. 

“Because it’s romantic! And I forgot to tell him how sorry I was about Wells, but he didn’t say anything to me either. So I think writing it in a letter would be better. Don’t you think?” 

Lincoln didn’t want to tell the Princess what he really thought. He didn’t get paid enough for that. But he did walk over to her desk and scribble a few words down for her to copy. Something he imagined someone like Lord Roan would hear from a royal after the loss of a dear friend. It was very formal, but Octavia didn’t seem to mind. She copied it fervently and added some more. Then she signed it, placed it into an envelope, and sealed it with a day-old lipstick stain kiss. 

“Can you give it to him? I’m absolutely bushed.” 

Octavia started discarding her clothes from her body as Lincoln stood there with the letter awkwardly in his hands. He was out the door before she could completely strip down and pass out. 

He paced in front of Lord Roan’s door for a few moments before he signaled the guards to announce his arrival. The room was similar to all the other staterooms in this wing of the castle—fireplace, bed, sitting area, wardrobe. But it was a room that had been used frequently over the years by the same guest. Little trinkets on the dressers, personal touches on the walls, and pictures. Lincoln tried not to let his chest tighten at the sight of a picture of a young Lord Roan and Prince Wells with an even younger Princess Octavia in between them on the nightstand.

Lord Roan looked up from a book on his lap, slightly perturbed from being disturbed, but schooled his features. Lincoln did the same with his and handed him the letter. 

“From the Princess.”

“Her Highness has her bodyguard running errands for her now? That’s new. Where’s the silver platter?” 

Lincoln clenched his jaw but didn’t respond. He stepped back against the wall and waited to be dismissed. Lord Roan opened the letter, throwing the kissed envelope in the trash bin under his desk, but didn’t signal for Lincoln to leave. He read the letter to himself and then set it down on his desk with a small smile ghosting on his lips as he stared down at it. 

“Are—are you going to send a reply?” Lincoln stammered quietly to him. Roan looked up slowly at him and looked him over. 

“I’m a lord, and that’s maybe not a life you can comprehend bodyguard, but I don’t need to send letters to the Princess.“

“But it’s romantic!” Lincoln couldn’t help but blurt out the echo of Octavia’s words as heat rose under his skin at what the lord was insinuating. Lord Roan rolled his eyes. 

“Fine. Let’s write a letter back,” Roan said and leaned back. “And what would a bodyguard think is _romantic_ to say?” It was a challenge and Lincoln went toward him in search of a pad to pen his response. The other man handed him a feathered fountain pen to go with the fancy stationery that was apparently unused from his desk. 

“Dearest Octavia—“

“That’s still a Your Highness to you, you know?” 

The pen in Lincoln’s hand scratched the pad as he faltered at the words. 

“The Princess loved her brother, didn’t she?” 

“He was her most important person. He was everyone’s person. Mine, too. The absence of him…” Roan couldn’t finish his sentence, but Lincoln did for him in the letter. He wrote to Octavia of the grief Lord Roan felt. It was something he probably would have never said aloud to her, but he approved it. 

After a few more sentences, Lincoln was ready for him to sign off, but then Roan spoke, “Yours in grief and in comfort...heavy emphasis on the _comfort_ , if you know what I mean,” Roan smirked, and Lincoln wondered how hard his jaw could tighten before it would snap. 

He left the letter for Octavia on her nightstand with a glass of water and ibuprofen. When she awoke in the morning, he reluctantly helped her write another letter asking Lord Roan to tea and his response was dull but accepted. Days later Roan asked for help to write a poem in his letter and Octavia’s face lit up brighter than the lights on the Christmas trees in her room when she read it.

If Lincoln knew he would be spending the next few weeks leading up to Christmas writing letters for two lovesick idiots, he would have stolen the Crown Jewels and rode off into the sunset instead. 

He wasn’t the only one looking for an escape though. Octavia pulled him out of the castle for the first time to go shopping days later. That was her excuse, but Lincoln knew she had had a bad batch of jobi nuts and too much to drink the day before that left her unable to deal with her family today. So shopping they went. 

The little town was picturesque. Garland hung from the awnings of the quaint shops, twinkling lights dusted the trees, and everyone smiled brightly at everyone else as they trudged through freshly fallen snow. It looked like something you would see in one of Prince Bellamy’s films around the holidays. 

The Princess was bundled up in a red wool jacket with matching gloves, a scarf, and toboggan. Lincoln was appropriately dressed, too, but it was still freezing. He shivered as he helped Octavia out of the car. 

“It’s only a little chilly,” Octavia giggled as she took his hand.

“Maybe to you, but there’s something to the hard chill of this West Coast wind that we don’t have on the other side of the country,” Lincoln told her.

“Oh, you’re one of those,” she said knowingly, but Lincoln wasn’t sure what she thought she was insinuating. 

“I grew up on the outskirts of Polis. Not exactly like _those_.” 

Lincoln wanted to tell her how it was because of the Council’s mistreatment of the people there that landed him a job with royalty, but something in a shop window caught the princess’s eye before he could speak. 

They were in-and-out of a dozen shops by mid-afternoon. Lincoln’s arms were weighed down with bags and the princess’s many purchases. This was what he had expected when he first was assigned to her detail months earlier. The spoiled and pampered royal who spent her days spending a fortune while the less fortunate floundered under her family’s rule. 

But something was different about the outing today. Octavia would buy something that was definitely for herself and then a second item that was most certainly not. A faux fur coat here and an extra wool one there. Heels in one size and boots in another. A box of chocolates and even a Christmas ham! When they dropped off the bags at their waiting car, Octavia rambled off to the driver addresses to the local church and orphanage. 

Once the Princess was satisfied with ensuring a flourishing economy of the small mountain town, Lincoln escorted her to a small café to meet her brother, Prince Bellamy, for a hot drink. Lincoln leaned up against the wall in the shadows next to Miller who had been watching the new heir to the throne with his date, Echo.

For all her faults, and all the drama, Lincoln was glad he had been assigned to the Princess instead of the Prince. Falling for a commoner as soon as becoming next in line for the throne was no easy picnic, maybe more of a minefield, but that was a story to tell another day. 

Octavia embraced her brother affectionately and gave the other woman two quick pecks on each cheek. The lunch date went on uneventfully, they ordered the local cuisine and cups of hot cocoa, argued over who was the most insufferable in their family, and were left alone, not bothered by any of the patrons or anyone passing by the café. The mountain town was certainly a breath of fresh air from the normal stifling atmosphere of the hills. 

Once they were back at the castle, Octavia sat down at her desk. Without her drugs or her drinks, Lincoln wasn’t sure how her mood would be after such a long day, but she was alert and eager to write. The letter writing was becoming such a routine...for both of them. 

Roan stopped writing the letters all together after the first few, but Lincoln had continued to write them for him and he fell deeper in love with Octavia because of it. He tried to keep her from knowing it was him who was writing to her. He also tried to keep her safe. He was failing at least one of those things. He had to be. 

Lincoln read the Princess’s latest letter later that evening in the library and wrote a reply leaving it tucked away in the red book with the gold script for safekeeping so he could deliver it to her the next day.   
  


_My dearest Roan,_

_Have you ever had such a clear day—not the sky, but you? Clear and alive._

_That’s what today felt like. For the first time in such a long time. And I know my mother would say it was because I went a day without substances but I think it was more than that._

_When Wells would come home from school, we would go into the city and buy these little gifts with the money he had tucked away. Chocolates for the staff, socks for their children, and we would leave little tin cans filled with sweets by the gates for the homeless._

_Wells was the first one to teach me how to be kind. How to care for something more than oneself._

_Today I did something that I hope would make him proud._

_I miss him terribly._

_Yours, O_

_Dear Octavia,_

_The days spent with you are always the clearest._

_I’m not sure what exactly you did today though...perhaps clothed the orphans and fed the hungry for Christmas?_

_Whatever it was I am pleased to hear you so happy. You deserve to be—happy, alive, loved._

_All my love, L—oan_

The next day, Octavia slipped out of the castle after lunch before Lincoln was even aware of her absence. He usually kept a close eye on her but as Christmas Day drew closer, the royal family and their guests were spending more and more time together, so there wasn’t much need for bodyguards. 

The panic of her disappearance was starting to set in and Lincoln’s usual calm and collected manner was slipping as Prince Bellamy passed him pacing in the hallway outside Octavia’s door half an hour later. 

“Your Highness,” Lincoln said and bowed. 

“Lincoln,” the Prince said, inclining his head and noticing Lincoln's frantic stance. “You know Octavia has run off with Roan, right?”

Lincoln’s face paled and Bellamy quickly added, “Down the mountain! Just for a break from everything. They went for a swim or something at the hot springs. Miller’s trailing them so you don’t have to worry about her.” 

“Right. Thank you, Your Highness. Do you need anything?” Lincoln tried to quell his alarm at the situation as best he could. 

“No, no. Just going to find a girl about a dirty soy chai latte,” Bellamy smiled and left Lincoln to his pacing. 

When Octavia stormed in later that evening, her hair was soaking wet and her face was lit with anger. Lincoln fetched her towels and warm, dry clothes, but was afraid to even ask what had her so upset. She had come back alone, no lords in sight. 

She huffed a dismissal to him and Lincoln let her be. The relief of her safe return had left his body utterly exhausted. He was out as soon as he made it back to his room.

He was surprised to see Octavia standing at the foot of Lincoln’s bed early the next morning in head-to-toe winter gear. 

“Hey, Bodyguard, do you want to go sledding?” the Princess asked and Lincoln squinted up at her taking in the snowsuit she wore that fit tightly down her body. He wasn’t sure if he was still dreaming, until she convinced him to pull on clothes, and they were standing outside at the top of a large hill in view of the castle a few hundred feet away and a few feet of snow underfoot. 

They took deep breaths letting the cold mountain air fill their lungs and billow out their mouths like the curl of steam from a train on top of the hill quietly. The sun was rising in the east and as it rose it revealed a scene that took Lincoln’s breath away. 

The powder on the slope down the hill was untouched, soft and delicate snowflakes fell around them, and Octavia was glowing in the morning light. Her dark hair was curling up out from under her hat and her cheeks were rosy pink as her head was raised up to the sky with her eyes closed. 

Before he could process any of the feelings stirring in his chest, she threw the sled down on the ground. He helped her steady it, waiting for her to hop on, and then was prepared to step back and watch her, but she pulled him down behind her. 

They flew down the slope, and Octavia’s excited yelps at the bumps caused Lincoln to tighten his hold around her waist nestling her closer back into his chest. They landed into a shallow embankment that was damp where the snow was slushy. They both groaned and then burst into laughter. 

“And now we trudge back up to do it all again!” Octavia beamed and reached out her hands for Lincoln to pull her up. He did and then tucked the sled under his arm, but the hill looked a lot larger from the bottom. 

“You should have brought the sportsman with you instead,” Lincoln said as Octavia took off up the hill. 

“But I like spending time with you,” she called back. Halfway up, she stopped and turned to look at Lincoln who was just as quickly managing his way up with his long strides. “We used to do this when we were kids. Wells, Bellamy, and I. I asked you to come with me and not Lord Roan because I like y—you’re the only one here who doesn’t remind me of my brother. And right now, there’s no one else I’d like to be here with in the world.” 

Lincoln stopped beside her, setting a foot back to keep his balance, and took the sight of the Princess in. The sun was high up in the sky now and the Princess’s eyes were bright and clear as seafoam green against the bright backdrop. 

“I’ll race you to the top, Princess.” 

“You’re on, Bodyguard.” 

It was the tradition on Christmas Day for King Marcus to dismiss all the staff for the holiday. And usually, when they were at the main palace it meant they could all go home to their families. Since they were away in the mountains, the staff had made themselves scarce before any of the royal family awoke. 

Octavia had forgotten all about the custom when she rose that day. She got ready, putting together an outfit for the day, and then went in search of her bodyguard. 

She couldn’t find him anywhere, and the halls of the castle were eerily silent as well. She crept up and down the stairs, to the kitchens, and past the windows that looked out over the iced gardens. 

When she finally stumbled upon someone, it was Bellamy on his way to the study on the third floor in the East wing. He was dressed in the wine red suit she had picked out for him and she told him how dashing he looked. He took her hand and twirled her around letting her gown flutter out. The two-piece was handmade by hers truly; a pearl and ruby-encrusted lace bodysuit under a silk pleated red skirt. 

There wasn’t really a need for them being so dressed up. The Christmas family photo had already been taken, and the message to the people prerecorded, but there was nothing more the royal family loved than putting on a show. 

The siblings approached the doors to the study, waiting, and that’s when Octavia remembered the staff was off for the day. She chuckled and Bellamy realized the same information around the time she did. So they pushed open the doors together themselves. 

Inside by a roaring fire, there was her mother and father, Lord Roan, Echo, and Uncle Bill. 

“There you are, my children. Merry Christmas, darlings.” Queen Aurora waltzed over to them and tried to give them hugs with just her hands on their shoulders. She made a face like a smile but it came out as more of a grimace. Aurora had had one too many nannies for her children that caused her to lack in the motherhood department. But she was always made to be a queen. 

“Gosh, mom, lay off the Botox,” Bellamy joked and Aurora swatted him. 

“And what are you wearing?” Octavia asked, horrified at her mother’s tight silver dress that was draped with a matching fringe neck shawl. The Princess shook her head to clear the image and moved farther into the study where her father was sitting in a winged chair by the warm fire.

“Merry Christmas, Dad,” she sat on the armrest and kissed him on the cheek. Her father echoed her greeting but was distracted by the chessboard that was between him and the other person in the chair beside him. Prince William, or has he liked to say, Call-Me-Uncle-Bill.

Octavia wasn’t the biggest fan of her uncle. He was always fraternizing with the help, causing uproars against her father, plotting with her mother, and teasing her brother over their once shared position in the royal lineage as second-borns. But Octavia tolerated him because he always had a stash with him. 

He slipped the jobi nuts out of his pocket, and Octavia took a glass of bubbling Malbec from him when he offered it to her. She hadn’t been drinking or partaking in anything much else the last few days, but the heat from the fireplace and her mother’s scowl were stifling. 

“Wells’ favorite?” Bellamy questioned the chessboard as he approached. He pulled up a chair next to Echo and they all formed a broken circle around the game. 

Playing board games was a Christmas tradition for the royals that started when all three children were very young. But the days of Candycane Land and Chutes & Ladders were lost the older they got and traded in for more advanced strategic competitions. 

Wells had mastered the game of chess by the time he was eleven. Bellamy tried to keep up but was always moves behind him and so turned to card games and tricks. Octavia, though not nearly as competitive as her brothers, loved a good game of Clue! or Monopoly. 

“Your turn, son,” King Marcus said and rose from his seat letting Bellamy try a game against Call-Me-Uncle-Bill, who had won the last six games that lasted through the morning and into the afternoon. He had been the one to teach Wells how to play so effortlessly after all. 

Octavia was trying to be civil with Roan in the corner as she downed glass after glass, but she watched Bellamy and her uncle carefully now. The wetter the room got the meaner some of the people in it were. 

“Oh, joy. The Spare who is now the Heir. You think you can best me?” Bill smirked with an acidic taunt in his words. “Let me give you a little tip: the king is the most important piece on the chessboard. And the pawns are his defense. They can be promoted but if they’re captured you lose the game. Don’t be a pawn, Your Highness.” 

“I intend to be the king,” Bellamy spoke quietly. 

“Or are you still just a pawn?” 

Everything happened very quickly, yet in slow motion. A bang on the table caused chess pieces to tumble to the floor, and then Octavia wasn’t sure who threw the first punch, or when Lincoln and Miller stormed into the room, or who’s words hit her the hardest, but the wine infused with jobi nuts settling in her stomach felt like hot rocks and a vomit of words spilled right out of her. 

“Stop it!” she yelled as the bodyguards pulled the men apart. She stood up and walked slowly to the middle of the room ready to point a finger at all of them. 

“Christmas is hard sometimes. Families are hard,” Octavia emphasized. “But being alone sometimes is the hardest of all. We’ve all been bruised a bit and we’ve had our hearts broken, we’ve lost so much, but we are the rulers of fighters so that’s what we do. We get up, we move on, we fight.

“But not each other! We face the things that are bigger than us with dignity and with courage and we ask for help when we need it. So let’s all stop being so goddamn bitter that things didn’t turn out the way we hoped they would...oh, and Merry Christmas!”

All she had to do was look in Lincoln’s direction when she was finished and he was pulling her gently out of the study through a hidden door he had entered from moments earlier. As she glanced back at her family she saw that her mother was in shock, her father appeared to be crying, Uncle Bill had a cut under his left eye, Bellamy was fuming, and there had never felt like a more gaping hole the size of her brother, Wells, in the room with them then at that very moment.

It was a blur getting back to her room, but by time she did the castle was spinning and when she laid down she felt ill. At some point, Lincoln found a bucket, and she alternated filling it with vomit and tears. Sobs wracked her body as adrenaline and grief mixed inside of her. 

Eventually, exhaustion took her and she dozed off. The light outside was fading when she awoke to the soft, low sound of humming filling the air as someone’s fingers were carding through her hair gently. 

She tried to sit up but a sharp pull to her scalp caused her to shout out in pain. 

“I’m so sorry, Octavia—Princess...No, I’m very sorry, Your Highness,” her bodyguard said and let go of her hair standing up quickly from her bed. Lincoln was moving toward the door. 

“Wait, Lincoln, don’t go!” She called out and reached up to her hair feeling the plaits woven back. “Did you..?”

“Your hair was a mess, Princess,” Lincoln stated and shifted his weight, his face and hands unsure of what to do next. He had one hand on the doorknob and one twitching by his side while his eyes lingered longingly on her. 

Octavia’s fingers traced the braids down her scalp and realized that most of her hair was still wild. She looked up at Lincoln in question. 

“I was almost finished…”

“Come back then,” she commanded and patted the bed beside her. He walked slowly back across the room and Octavia turned away from him pulling her legs up to her chest. She felt the bed dip down and closed her eyes as he combed through her hair and picked up where he left off. 

He didn’t hum this time so the room was silent and Octavia felt her emotions threatening to swim up to the surface. 

“I’m trying so hard…,” she cried out in need of reassurance. The last few weeks of her life had felt like an alternate reality, but the cold harsh truth of it all was making her feel very small. 

“Your brother would be so proud of what you said, Octavia,” Lincoln decided. He smoothed out a strand of hair and tucked it behind her ear. She could feel the braids coming together as one down her back and then he let go. The absence of warmth from his fingers made her shiver. 

“Thank you.”

“Would you like me to fetch you anything from the kitchen?”

“No, I’m fine, but can you get me that over there on my desk?” She pointed to the present wrapped in gold on her desk. The royal family didn’t exchange gifts for the holidays, but she had found a present for her bodyguard that she had been dying to give him all day. 

She knew it was heavy, Lincoln held it with both hands and sat it down heavily on the bed beside her. 

“It’s for you. Open it.”

“I...I...I—“ Lincoln hesitated but began unwrapping the present to reveal the red book from the library with the gold script. Before he could say anything Octavia started to explain. 

“Roan didn’t know about this book. It was a secret.” 

“But you told me?” 

“I trust you. And so I went back over all the letters and I knew Roan hadn’t written them. I confronted him about it at the hot springs and he simply had no clue...but you had to have written the letters because the other day I found this...you left one for me in the library. Here,” she said and laid her hand on top of his. 

Lincoln stared into her eyes searching back and forth for an answer to the question he hadn’t asked aloud yet. Then he languidly opened the book and revealed a faded yellow scroll sitting in the hollowed-out space wrapped with a twine bow. He took it out carefully and loosened the twine unrolling a letter.

“Is this—? What is—?”

“It’s an original letter from Josephine to her lover.”

“Oh, Octavia...I don’t know what to say,” he said as he scanned over the old letter. She had read it a dozen times after finding it in the archives. The letter was from the start of Josephine and Gabriel’s relationship when they were falling for one another. 

Lincoln made a move to grasp Octavia’s hand and she entwined it with hers and then pulled them up to her mouth planting a kiss to his fingertips. 

“It can be our secret.”

**Author's Note:**

> Tee, I am so, so sorry how incredibly late this fic is. I adored writing it for you but life kept me insanely busy the last few months! anyway, I hope you enjoyed this little modern monarchy au and happy (super late) holidays! ♥ 
> 
> Love to hear your thoughts and favorite lines!


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